Very sad and worrisome to this grandmother that college age and recent college grads are so very poorly educated--and so susceptible to the emotioial, simplistic, Socialist/Marxist/American-hating talking points. Aso the intense TDS suffered by so many others. Great analysis Batya.
Batya this is so good. Out the gate strong, but rather than quote back a few paragraphs annoyingly I’ll just take the crown jewel: “How can journalists lie about the news if people refuse to follow the news?”
B. It is so distressing to see the left political class LITERALLY cheering on Iran because of their TDS. Combined with a media that is flat outlying about what's happening, and 'allies' who won't help their own cause, making their lives better, and it shows how low our society has fallen.
I completely agree. They want… no, they need Trump to fail in order to maintain the huge gross margins they reap by selling cheap imports to first world economies. It is the source of their wealth. They would root for the devil over Trump because they have so much more in common with the devil.
We can’t have an American led world order without Europe, and the founding members of the liberal, capitalist, democratic coalition that defeated the USSR and Nazi Germany.
Liberal internationalism was and is the US with Europe confronting the world’s tyrants and their totalitarian systems. And we are going to abandon our NATO allies for a cluster of repressive monarchies in the Persian Gulf? If I am not mistaken, the only country any Westerner would willing to choose to live in would be Israel and no Westerner would volunteer to reside in any of the countries you listed. So what exactly are we fighting for if we give up on Europe? A single democracy in the Middle East, Japan and South Korea? At the expense of the thirty-five countries on the European continent?
Europe is the mother culture of the globe. Where do the world’s elite go to learn the arts? Fashion? Painting? Science? Research & Development? Urban planning? Law? Finance? Where was everything invented that we take for granted today?
America is a descendant of Europe. The idea of countenancing the world without her is analogous to a son facing the evil of the world without protecting his mother.
Batya, I have loved your work since Bad News and your time on Rising but your aim is off here.
You make some valid points, but I live in the UK and Western Europe has taken a very bad turn. Many believe that the Fukuyama era can somehow be recovered or restored. They still won't admit that a combination of neoliberalism, mass migration, and Open Society thinking have been disastrous for many of their own citizens- about 40%, if one looks at the data on who occupies the C2 and D roles in employment. They simply didn't understand that for a sizable portion of the population labour potential is pretty inelastic.
It's a combination of blank slate thinking and structural Social Darwinism aimed at the bottom half.
Don't get me wrong- neoliberalism was great for many parts of the world. Selective migration which matches the economic needs and national interest of a country is a good thing, and many aspects of the Open Society were good principles. But one has to remember Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. Islam politically intolerant of value pluralism at a constitutional level. Islam literally means Submission. Lauded historian Tom Holland recently stated "I think Islam is uniquely indigestible for a secular mindset".
And sure, it's not all Muslims. Around 50% in the UK don't believe that apostates should be put to death or that homosexuality should be outlawed, and only 30% think switching the Sharia Law as a legal system is a good idea. But 39% of British Muslims hold favourable views of the Iran regime, irrespective of their thoughts about America. Britain's 250,000 Jews are in a terrible position. They are the most targeted group in terms of hate-motivated crimes. Their kid's schools basically need around the clock security and the British government doesn't have the resources or the inclination.
I am not sure what the neoliberal economic disaster and Islamic migration has to do with abandoning our European alliances and heritage for the Gulf Monarchies and their fundamentalist Islamic societies.
I agree with most of what you posted. It’s true that literalist Islam (like Wahhabism, the favored cleric of Saudi Arabia) is incompatible with pluralism. It depends on how you define Western Values, my definition is much less secular than the mean person of the UK. If Protestantism were the dominant value system and not progressivism, liberalism, pluralism, secularism and all the ideologies that require copious amounts of faith even when spectacularly failing then Islamization would not be an issue.
When will we admit that is not us that have the ideas but in fact it is the ideas that have us?
That point aside, in order to confront both the economic and migratory challenges; the US and Europe will need each other in close proximity!!
I largely agree. The problem is that it is Western Europe which has abandoned many of the more cherished shared values. What makes it worse is that if one looks at the beliefs and concerns of ordinary Western voters, then on most issues Western citizens are broadly aligned with those of American citizens. What differs is not the institutional class, but rather the degree of power and control of the institutional class in shaping national direction. Europe is far worse off in this regard. Institutionally, the EU is designed to take power away from the voters and give it to the technocratic class.
America seems to be fighting of the mind virus, whereas in the UK and most of Western Europe this is sadly not the case. Most of our institutional class are post-national in mindset, imagining a supranational world order, where technocratic governance has no democratic veto to check the power of the unelected and the unaccountable.
Besides, I don’t think Batya was arguing that America should pursue Gulf State allies at the expense of European relationships, merely that currently the Western partners have proven themselves fickle allies, too worried about their dinner party friendships by failing to cater to the every whim of the climate, race, and oppression-obsessed.
A while back, I became frustrated by the deep gulf between commentators on both sides of the spectrum on issues like Gaza and Ukraine. I obviously had my own preferences, but I prefer my information sources to be more unvarnished and less stilted than what one would get from a position in a formal debate.
I wrote an AI prompt to try and discover neutral geopolitical thinkers who didn’t show instrumental rationality or motivated biases in their positions, and the AI threw out Kishore Mahbubani. He blames the Europeans for Ukraine (as well as Putin, obviously). He sees the current and previous crops of European leaders as extraordinarily naive in believing that diplomacy and economic involvement can solve every problem between states, and points to the incredible degree to which we let our militaries degrade as a primary cause for the Ukraine invasion.
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
Niall Ferguson seems to rate Kishore Mahbubani very highly, if that’s any help.
It should be noted that the Overton Window is shifting Right in Europe, but the change has yet to penetrate the institutional class. It’s somewhat doubtful whether it ever will.
The risk of Iran attacking or undermining the leadership in the Gulf States has been so diminished it is now in their economic and security interests to call Iran a pariah. We should welcome them to the club not resent them for being late to the game. If Iran is a pariah, is it too far-fetched to believe Israel can become their peaceful partner?
Batya, I watched a Business Basics YouTube video which argued that Trump and the Israelis have deliberately been targeting regime and IRGC targets, while leaving the Artesh largely alone, a more conventional and professional military force intact. They've also been careful to leave most of the economic infrastructure intact and studiously avoided civilian casualties where ever possible It looks like there is a cogent strategy at play, and the likely endgame scenario envisaged is nothing like the failed Regime Change occupations of the past. They will continue to degrade the IRGC and then sit back and let the people go for another uprising. I think the hope is that if the Artesh thinks the IRGC is sufficiently degraded, they will back the civilians.
70-80% of the Iranian population is anti-regime. The Artesh are often conscripted, and there is little love lost between the IRGC and the Artesh. The IRGC gets access to the best weapons, controls critical sites, and all has access to the corrupt wealth generated by resource industries. They are also often involved in Gestapo-style loyalty inquisitions of the Artesh, and despised for this reason. Think Wehrmacht and SS. The IRGC are the SS.
Batya, take a look at the Israeli press. Same story because the Israeli media is almost all leftist and they all have BDS (Bibi Derangement Syndrome). Ha'aretz of course takes the cake. The deep state here is alive and well, just ask Ehud Barak or Baharav-Miera. Hopefully Israelis are waking up which can be seen on our new news channel 14.
Says something that our allies are kleptocratic absolute monarchies, in place of social democracies. Birds of a feather fly together.
(I guess this post supersedes the one where you said Trump's truculence had forced Europe to back up our vaporous plan to open the Strait of Hormuz?—which, of course, was open until the Trumpanyahu War began.)
The real wishful thinking is ignoring Saudi Arabia’s loud statements against the war (before it occurred), and claiming they want it to continue now. — Same goes with every Gulf nation (with the exception to UAE “after it was attacked”, but not before the war). The UAE of course loves the change of headlines after it got hit and exposed by the Saudis over their malicious involvement in Yemen and Sudan
Rooting for but not actually getting involved militarily. How does that make the Gulf countries the “real allies”? They too just let the US and Israel do the dirty work.
Very sad and worrisome to this grandmother that college age and recent college grads are so very poorly educated--and so susceptible to the emotioial, simplistic, Socialist/Marxist/American-hating talking points. Aso the intense TDS suffered by so many others. Great analysis Batya.
Batya this is so good. Out the gate strong, but rather than quote back a few paragraphs annoyingly I’ll just take the crown jewel: “How can journalists lie about the news if people refuse to follow the news?”
A. Describing that video as 'darling' is awesome.
B. It is so distressing to see the left political class LITERALLY cheering on Iran because of their TDS. Combined with a media that is flat outlying about what's happening, and 'allies' who won't help their own cause, making their lives better, and it shows how low our society has fallen.
You’re spot on again, especially about Europe
I completely agree. They want… no, they need Trump to fail in order to maintain the huge gross margins they reap by selling cheap imports to first world economies. It is the source of their wealth. They would root for the devil over Trump because they have so much more in common with the devil.
We can’t have an American led world order without Europe, and the founding members of the liberal, capitalist, democratic coalition that defeated the USSR and Nazi Germany.
Liberal internationalism was and is the US with Europe confronting the world’s tyrants and their totalitarian systems. And we are going to abandon our NATO allies for a cluster of repressive monarchies in the Persian Gulf? If I am not mistaken, the only country any Westerner would willing to choose to live in would be Israel and no Westerner would volunteer to reside in any of the countries you listed. So what exactly are we fighting for if we give up on Europe? A single democracy in the Middle East, Japan and South Korea? At the expense of the thirty-five countries on the European continent?
Europe is the mother culture of the globe. Where do the world’s elite go to learn the arts? Fashion? Painting? Science? Research & Development? Urban planning? Law? Finance? Where was everything invented that we take for granted today?
America is a descendant of Europe. The idea of countenancing the world without her is analogous to a son facing the evil of the world without protecting his mother.
Batya, I have loved your work since Bad News and your time on Rising but your aim is off here.
You make some valid points, but I live in the UK and Western Europe has taken a very bad turn. Many believe that the Fukuyama era can somehow be recovered or restored. They still won't admit that a combination of neoliberalism, mass migration, and Open Society thinking have been disastrous for many of their own citizens- about 40%, if one looks at the data on who occupies the C2 and D roles in employment. They simply didn't understand that for a sizable portion of the population labour potential is pretty inelastic.
It's a combination of blank slate thinking and structural Social Darwinism aimed at the bottom half.
Don't get me wrong- neoliberalism was great for many parts of the world. Selective migration which matches the economic needs and national interest of a country is a good thing, and many aspects of the Open Society were good principles. But one has to remember Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. Islam politically intolerant of value pluralism at a constitutional level. Islam literally means Submission. Lauded historian Tom Holland recently stated "I think Islam is uniquely indigestible for a secular mindset".
And sure, it's not all Muslims. Around 50% in the UK don't believe that apostates should be put to death or that homosexuality should be outlawed, and only 30% think switching the Sharia Law as a legal system is a good idea. But 39% of British Muslims hold favourable views of the Iran regime, irrespective of their thoughts about America. Britain's 250,000 Jews are in a terrible position. They are the most targeted group in terms of hate-motivated crimes. Their kid's schools basically need around the clock security and the British government doesn't have the resources or the inclination.
I am not sure what the neoliberal economic disaster and Islamic migration has to do with abandoning our European alliances and heritage for the Gulf Monarchies and their fundamentalist Islamic societies.
I agree with most of what you posted. It’s true that literalist Islam (like Wahhabism, the favored cleric of Saudi Arabia) is incompatible with pluralism. It depends on how you define Western Values, my definition is much less secular than the mean person of the UK. If Protestantism were the dominant value system and not progressivism, liberalism, pluralism, secularism and all the ideologies that require copious amounts of faith even when spectacularly failing then Islamization would not be an issue.
When will we admit that is not us that have the ideas but in fact it is the ideas that have us?
That point aside, in order to confront both the economic and migratory challenges; the US and Europe will need each other in close proximity!!
I largely agree. The problem is that it is Western Europe which has abandoned many of the more cherished shared values. What makes it worse is that if one looks at the beliefs and concerns of ordinary Western voters, then on most issues Western citizens are broadly aligned with those of American citizens. What differs is not the institutional class, but rather the degree of power and control of the institutional class in shaping national direction. Europe is far worse off in this regard. Institutionally, the EU is designed to take power away from the voters and give it to the technocratic class.
America seems to be fighting of the mind virus, whereas in the UK and most of Western Europe this is sadly not the case. Most of our institutional class are post-national in mindset, imagining a supranational world order, where technocratic governance has no democratic veto to check the power of the unelected and the unaccountable.
Besides, I don’t think Batya was arguing that America should pursue Gulf State allies at the expense of European relationships, merely that currently the Western partners have proven themselves fickle allies, too worried about their dinner party friendships by failing to cater to the every whim of the climate, race, and oppression-obsessed.
A while back, I became frustrated by the deep gulf between commentators on both sides of the spectrum on issues like Gaza and Ukraine. I obviously had my own preferences, but I prefer my information sources to be more unvarnished and less stilted than what one would get from a position in a formal debate.
I wrote an AI prompt to try and discover neutral geopolitical thinkers who didn’t show instrumental rationality or motivated biases in their positions, and the AI threw out Kishore Mahbubani. He blames the Europeans for Ukraine (as well as Putin, obviously). He sees the current and previous crops of European leaders as extraordinarily naive in believing that diplomacy and economic involvement can solve every problem between states, and points to the incredible degree to which we let our militaries degrade as a primary cause for the Ukraine invasion.
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
Niall Ferguson seems to rate Kishore Mahbubani very highly, if that’s any help.
It should be noted that the Overton Window is shifting Right in Europe, but the change has yet to penetrate the institutional class. It’s somewhat doubtful whether it ever will.
The risk of Iran attacking or undermining the leadership in the Gulf States has been so diminished it is now in their economic and security interests to call Iran a pariah. We should welcome them to the club not resent them for being late to the game. If Iran is a pariah, is it too far-fetched to believe Israel can become their peaceful partner?
Batya, I watched a Business Basics YouTube video which argued that Trump and the Israelis have deliberately been targeting regime and IRGC targets, while leaving the Artesh largely alone, a more conventional and professional military force intact. They've also been careful to leave most of the economic infrastructure intact and studiously avoided civilian casualties where ever possible It looks like there is a cogent strategy at play, and the likely endgame scenario envisaged is nothing like the failed Regime Change occupations of the past. They will continue to degrade the IRGC and then sit back and let the people go for another uprising. I think the hope is that if the Artesh thinks the IRGC is sufficiently degraded, they will back the civilians.
70-80% of the Iranian population is anti-regime. The Artesh are often conscripted, and there is little love lost between the IRGC and the Artesh. The IRGC gets access to the best weapons, controls critical sites, and all has access to the corrupt wealth generated by resource industries. They are also often involved in Gestapo-style loyalty inquisitions of the Artesh, and despised for this reason. Think Wehrmacht and SS. The IRGC are the SS.
Batya, take a look at the Israeli press. Same story because the Israeli media is almost all leftist and they all have BDS (Bibi Derangement Syndrome). Ha'aretz of course takes the cake. The deep state here is alive and well, just ask Ehud Barak or Baharav-Miera. Hopefully Israelis are waking up which can be seen on our new news channel 14.
Ok. List the Gulf States providing troops, logistical resources, etc.
1.
Says something that our allies are kleptocratic absolute monarchies, in place of social democracies. Birds of a feather fly together.
(I guess this post supersedes the one where you said Trump's truculence had forced Europe to back up our vaporous plan to open the Strait of Hormuz?—which, of course, was open until the Trumpanyahu War began.)
The real wishful thinking is ignoring Saudi Arabia’s loud statements against the war (before it occurred), and claiming they want it to continue now. — Same goes with every Gulf nation (with the exception to UAE “after it was attacked”, but not before the war). The UAE of course loves the change of headlines after it got hit and exposed by the Saudis over their malicious involvement in Yemen and Sudan
That our primary allies now are the repressive Saudis and no longer western democracies says a lot. Baghdad Batya speaking her truth!
Rooting for but not actually getting involved militarily. How does that make the Gulf countries the “real allies”? They too just let the US and Israel do the dirty work.
Nothing really surprises me regarding TDS since Biden’s Border. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Those who criticize Dear Leader have TDS.
Never trust legacy media and those in alternative media that left. It doesn’t matter if they’re Left or Right. They’re all grifters and have no soul.